


An Angel To Chase The Devil At Night

by Rhensis



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging & YouTube RPF
Genre: Angst, Death, Fluff, Insanity, M/M, Murder, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sadness, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:31:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1443628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhensis/pseuds/Rhensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan's an old soul. That's what people say, anyway. After one tragic day when he tries to teach a young girl how to 'fly' and she fails, he finds himself trying to decipher exactly what kind of soul he actually is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Angel To Chase The Devil At Night

**Author's Note:**

> Again, another fic from my tumblr account. As I have 99 fics this could take quite some time to transfer them all wow. Based off OneRepublic's Preacher.

He's an old soul. That's what they say, anyway. He has heard it said a thousand times and he's pretty sure he'll hear it said a thousand more. He doesn't really understand what it means, but he guesses that it's got something to do with the God that his grandfather keeps talking about. He supposes that his soul is old because it was made a long time ago and just never found a home until now, and he wonders whether that's the reason that the people in his school give him strange looks and stay at least thirty centimetres away from him at all times.

Not that he minds that, of course. It makes his crazy stories that he spins more believable, because who would question the mysterious boy in the corner that claims he knows how to fly?

One day, he proposes to teach someone, for a fee of course - a girl, slightly shorter than him, with high, dark pigtails and a thumb always in her mouth. Anxiously, she nods slowly, staring with wide eyes at him, her swimming blue ones meeting his dark mud coloured ones. Grinning, he watches as she presses a pound coin into her palm and he pockets it, thoughts already running through his head about what he could buy with it later. There's this sweet shop, one that his mum always takes him to on the way home from school so he can spend the small amount of pocket money his father gives him after a long day of work. Inside it's full of jars, crammed with sweet things like gum drops and strawberry laces and bonbons.

A crowd has already gathered and he knows, even at five years old, he has to give them a show. He offers his hand to her, and she nods cautiously, letting him take it. He has to half-drag her to the part of the playground with all the equipment, and in the silence that has settled across the other children, some of them much older than him, he can hear every one of his steps as he bounces happily across the asphalt.

"Up there," he points to the highest part of the climbing tower. The tower is far taller than him, and stands a good two feet above even the tallest of the eleven year olds, and he knows it's the perfect place to show her how to fly. She's nibbling on her lip, looking up at the top of the tower and then back down to him, bewildered. He rolls his eyes and huffs, pouting childishly when he realises that this is going to be more work than he had hoped. All he wants is his pound.

"But Daniel, it's really, really high," she grumbles. He stops his foot and crosses his arms.

"Do you want to fly? To fly you have to be up high, stupid. Come on, I'll show you, it's easy to get up there," he places a hand on the first bar as he speaks, and easily pulls himself up a little. He glances down at her and sees she's still unsure of following, so he goes higher. It only takes a couple more steps for her to start climbing too, but he's enjoying this too much to stop now. Besides, he figures that she'll probably need some encouragement when she gets up there.

Before long they're both at the top, and she reaches for his hand, grasping it tightly.

"Not everyone can fly. Are you sure?" He asks, pulling her forward so her toes hang over the edge. His do too, but not as much.

"I want to fly. Like a fairy, or an angel," she mutters, voice hoarse and barely a whisper. He smiles and steps back, resting a hand on her back.

"Spread out your arms. I'll help you, so don't worry, it'll be easy, like riding a bike," the confidence he speaks with belongs to that of someone much beyond his age, and the girl can't help but shiver at his tone. But she does what she's told anyway, because the mysterious boy in the corner can fly and she wants to too.

He tells her to step off, and she goes to do so, but then she looks down and she can't, she's terrified. So he rolls his eyes again and pushes gently with the hand that's resting on her back, helping her to fly.

She falls with a shriek. He hears it as clear as day when she hits the ground, the snapping of her neck, the crunching of her bones. And he just stands, watching as the children all take a step back, not able to say a word as they stare, dumbstruck.

The next thing he hears is the sound of a teacher screaming, running across the playground. Her high heels click loudly as she does and it sounds almost comical, and the sight of her flustered face just makes him smile slightly. The woman looks up at him, absolute horror written all over her face, and he realises that he should probably not be smiling about this, so he frowns instead, calling down, "She wasn't one of the chosen ones. She couldn't fly. I tried to help her, honest."

As sirens sound in the distance, he takes his eyes away from his teacher and inspects the girl, tilting his head to the side. The way that her legs are twisted, her hands are spread out, reminds him of the angels his grandfather tells him about. A pool of blood is forming beneath her dark locks, but he doesn't focus on that, instead he watches the small trickle of crimson staining the pale skin of her cheek, falling from her eye. It looks like she was crying.

Before long his mother comes to take him home. He's lifted off the climbing tower by the strong hands of the woman that has nurtured him for his whole life, and then he's placed into the chilled car. He wonders why she doesn't have the heating on, after all, it's the beginning of October and this is about when it starts to get cold, but he doesn't ask because he feels like he's in trouble, though he's not sure why.

Even so, the pound is burning a hole in his pocket, so he quietly asks, fiddling with his hands, "Mum, can we go to the sweet shop, please? Phyllis gave me a pound to say thank you for..." he trails off when he hears her take a sharp breath.

After a couple of seconds, she turns to face him, and, with a weak smile on her face, shakes her head.

"No, Daniel, not we can't, honey. You need to come straight home with me; some people will probably want to speak to you when we get there. Just tell them the truth, you don't have anything to be afraid of," he can tell by the way her voice wobbles that she's lying. Still, he nods, turning his head to watch as the town passes him by out of the window.

He's surprised when he gets back to his house the number of people that are crowded into their small living room, and he just wants to be left alone. He just wants to run away to his room and draw for a little while, maybe play with the new action figure he could last week for doing so well on the tests that his teachers gave him and none of the other children.

That night, when everyone leaves, having been assured by him a thousand times that it was Phyllis that wanted to fly, she wanted to step over the edge, and she's the one that took the final step, he curls up in bed and shuts his eyes. He wants to sleep, to wake up tomorrow because  _everything_ gets better overnight, but he can't. So when his grandfather pads into his room, he keeps his eyes shut and keeps his breathing steady.

The older man's hands are rough against his skin as he strokes the boy's forehead, and he shivers.

"Daniel, oh Daniel. Son, you got to find an angel to chase that devil in you away. God will help you, I promise, but you have to help yourself first," he whispers into the boy's ear, and the kid sighs, his grandfather's words running around in his head over and over again.

~

Dan is a psychopath. That's what they say, anyway. At the very least, they tell him, he has psychopathic tendencies. His mind has been poked and prodded in every way imaginable since that day, and he's totally and utterly sick of it. Maybe that's why, despite the fact that he knows how bad it is for him - after all, he has an IQ of 157, a fact that he is reminded of on a daily basis - he often finds himself sat on the roof of his parents' house with a cigarette between his lips. He's a heavy smoker, and that gives him a 24.4% chance of developing lung cancer, and then he has a one in fifteen chance of dying from that.

He sighs at himself and shakes his head as he takes the cancer stick from his lips and snubs it out before throwing it into the gutter at his feet. He memorised those statistics long ago when he was bored, and he kind of wishes that he hadn't. Then again, he couldn't really help it, considering the near enough eidetic memory that he is cursed with.

He can remember that day when he pushed that girl off the climbing tower as if it had happened yesterday, and he still feels nothing. Not a trace of guilt. He doesn't really know why he did it, but it's not the last time he broke someone's heart, figuratively or literally. There was the time he had been nine years old, overwhelmed by the therapists and the tutors and the fact that he practically had a label on his head that read "freak", and he'd drunk some of his mother's vodka because he knew that it helped her relax. Then he'd climbed into her car and driven straight into someone else - driving isn't hard, he'd been able to do so in theory since he was seven - killing them on impact.

That's  probably the most extreme example. Apart from that, there had been at least five girlfriends and another seven boyfriends that he had broken the hearts of, mostly because he had cheated on them with the next one in the chain, a chain that he eventually broke. He gave up. Finding someone he loves is impossible, if he really is a psychopath, so he decided that it was better to stop hurting people and just to stop.

Dan is seventeen years old, and he has no hope of ever finding someone he cares about. Hell, even his own family are just a tool for him, and he treats them as such. The only person that he thinks he ever might have felt anything towards is his grandfather and he's been dead for almost eleven years.

The words that that man spoke to him have stuck in his head ever since that day. He figured out a long time ago what they actually meant, but he knows that what the old man was trying to get him to do is impossible. He can't do anything to help himself, and he sure as hell will never find this 'angel' that he was told about.

Still, he's going to try, and he's going to try today. Not because he thinks he's going to succeed, but he knows that if he stays here much longer he's going to end up driving himself right to the edge of insanity. He can't stay here anymore, this place is so small, so limited, and the God that he was preached to about obviously doesn't exist to help him up back onto his feet.

He glances down at the driveway beneath him, and the old rickety car that his mother owns now that she had to sell her old one. His private lessons were expensive, and of course completely useless. He finished his a-levels last year, and even though he's still enrolled in school, he never goes. There's no point. Everyone hates him.

Taking one last deep breath of the air, he pushes himself up with his hands, the left one in a bandage due to the strain injury he gave it by drawing so much, and climbs back through the skylight into the attic that serves as his bedroom. His parents had told him they were putting him in there because it was the biggest room, big enough to hold not only his bed but also the huge desk that was covered in drawings that he would never show them, but in reality they were doing the same thing they had done to his grandfather, who had practically lived in here when he was alive. Trying to push Dan away, putting him as far away from them as they can.

His duffle bag is packed already, full of his clothes and the stacks of spare cash that he had taken from his parents' savings account. He has calculated that by not going to university or living for the final year that he was meant to stay here for he would save them the same amount of money as he's taking with him, and in his note he's explained that in quite some detail. Material concerns were easy for Dan to explain, the reasons for him leaving, not so much. He's never been good with words, being more of an artist than a poet, so he settled for a note much more practical than emotional.

One hundred thousand children run away every year, and Dan is about to be one of them, and he can't even put a few words together.

He strides towards the desk in the corner of the room and picks up the neat stack of drawings he wants to save, taking them and putting them carefully at the top of the bag before grabbing it and the car keys off the bed. The bandage is discarded by him tearing it off and throwing it onto his desk. The note is already in place, neatly resting on top of his freshly made bed, so he has nothing left to do before he leaves.

He doesn't look back when he does.

~

Dan is lost. This is one thing he doesn't have anyone else to tell him, considering the fact that from this morning he didn't have anyone else.

His phone keeps going off, and that's why he doesn't just take it out and quickly do a Google search for a map of the city that he's ended up in, because he doesn't dare look at those messages. It's stupid, and he curses himself internally for it, but he just can't bring himself to do it, so instead he just keeps wandering around aimlessly.

Or, at least, he keeps doing that until he realises that it's almost dinner time and he hasn't eaten today, and not only that but he's really fucking  _cold_  despite wearing two hoodies. He looks up from the pavement at his feet and searches with his eyes for some kind of a coffee shop or something, but instead his head collides with someone else's.

"Shit! Fucking hell, what are you-" he cuts himself off when he shakes his head and takes a look at the stranger. For the first time in his life, he freezes to the spot, absolutely transfixed and utterly confused.

The boy - no, man, he has to be a bit older than Dan - has ocean-coloured eyes, but not a clear ocean. More like the type that you see on a bright day when it's practically glittering and is a mixture of all kinds of blues and wonderful greens. This stranger's skin is pale, like he's used a stick of chalk to paint himself white, and the hair that he wears in a side fringe similar to Dan's is black, though when he takes a closer look Dan can see the brown roots.

"I'm sorry."  _Shit_. Dan opens his mouth but no sound comes out, because in front of him is an almost spitting image of the girl that he pushed off the climbing tower all those years ago, and it fascinates him.

"It's... It's okay," he stumbles over his words, and the man in front of him smiles shyly, a smile that Dan can't help but return.

"If you don't mind me saying, you look a bit lost, and you definitely don't sound like you're from around here, do you need any help?" The stranger speaks in a drawl that is definitely northern, matching that of those around them, and it's such a kind voice, deep but still lively.

"Uhm... I've never been to York before and I might be just a little bit lost," he says, and the man grins at him.

"Hey, well, I go to uni here so I know all the ins and outs, so I can help you, but first I think we should get off the street, it's  _freezing_ ," Dan nods eagerly, and the stranger offers a hand, one that, despite his better judgement, Dan accepts willingly.

They're quick to find a Starbucks, and they find the table nearest to the window. Dumping his bag down onto one of the seats, Dan digs around for a moment to find some money, and draws out a handful of notes. He can feel the stranger's eyes on him as he does, and a blush rises to his cheeks.

"Since you're going to help me, what do you want? I'm paying," the worlds spill from his mouth in a jumbled mess, and he curses at himself in his head again, wondering why he's acting like such an idiot. The stranger smiles at him though, instead of scolding him like his parents would have done.

"Thanks... Uhm, I'm sorry, but, what's your name?"

"Dan. And you?"

"Phil. And a caramel macchiato, please."  _Oh my fucking god_. Dan nods and turns away quickly so that Phil doesn't notice the look on his face and the blood draining from it. He must look like he's seen a ghost, but he practically has.

This can't be real. He's probably taken some drugs and is now just laying somewhere on a street hallucinating about a wonderful boy that looks  _exactly_ the same as the girl that he killed all those years ago. He even has the  _same_   _fucking name._

Even so, it  _feels_ real. In fact, it's the first time he's felt something in years, since his grandfather died and he locked himself in a room for a week.  _Psychopathic tendencies._ Does that mean he can feel, then? He's capable of it, surely?

Dan is a genius and he can't figure out a simple feeling. God, that IQ really means shit sometimes.

It doesn't take long for the drinks to be ready, Dan having ordered the same thing as Phil, and he takes them back quickly, setting the china mugs down to the table.

"Thanks. So, what brings you this far north then?"  Shrugging, Dan goes to stir his drink but realises that Phil is already doing it for him, and he looks up, smiling.

"Just... I'm looking for something. Something someone told me to look for a long time ago,"

"Yeah? And what's that? I mean, not to pry or anything, but you're what, sixteen? Shouldn't you be at home with your family?"

With a chuckle, Dan picks up the drink that Phil's finished stirring and puts it to his lips before he answers, thankful for the warmth. "Seventeen, actually. To be honest, I'm not really sure quite exactly what I'm looking for. I might have already found it though. Maybe,"

"Well, I hope whatever it is you find it," silence falls between them, but it's not awkward. It's comfortable, almost familiar, despite the fact that half an hour ago Dan didn't even know this boy existed.

His eyes on Phil, Dan watches as the boy drinks slowly, staring out of the window, even though he must have known Dan's gaze was on him. He's beautiful, Dan can't deny that, even though it feels slightly strange considering the fact that he's practically a clone of the girl that he killed, and it occurs to Dan that it's probably even weirder since the likelihood of Phil being gay is so small. The only statistics on the number of the population that identify as gay or bi he knows are from 2010, when 1.5% of the UK claimed to be so.

Dan hates statistics.

Then again, he's a bisexual psychopathic genius. It's not exactly like statistics can't be beaten.  

"So, Dan, do you need somewhere to stay? I can point you to like a thousand hotels, or, if you really want..." Phil trails off, shaking his head as if shaking away a thought.

"What?" Dan presses, putting his coffee down and leaning forward a little.

 "Look... I don't want to be forward... I mean, we just met, but if you wanted to come with me I could show you around the city tomorrow because I don't have any classes and..." he stops himself from rambling and looks down, fumbling with his hands. Dan has to stop myself from going 'aw' out loud considering how cute Phil is, a little blush creeping onto the pale man's cheeks.

Barely thinking, Dan clasps Phil's hand with his left and uses his other to put a finger under the older boy's chin to lift it up, making Phil look at Dan, "I would love to stay with you,"

Everything he knows tells him this is a bad idea. Two to three people are murdered every day in the UK. 3% of males in the UK are raped at some point in their lives by another male. The statistics that Dan absently lives his life by tell him there's every possibility of something going wrong, yet it's still a  _very_ small possibility.

Phil's face suddenly lights up with a grin, and Dan's stomach flips, something that he's never felt before.  _Fuck_ , this is really messed up.

"So, what kind of music do you listen to?" Phil asks quietly, latching his fingers properly in Dan's. Dan smiles with him and happily answers, pushing away any thoughts of stupidity to the back of his mind.

~

Dan is a complete bastard, and that's the one thing about himself that he figured out on his own without some therapist. By the time they've pushed open the door to Phil's flat, his duffel bag discarded on the floor, his lips are already on the older boy's, and he can't believe himself. God, he's such a twat. The first person he's felt anything towards in practically forever, and he's probably going to end up using him as a quick fuck because in reality he's a dick and speaking of dicks, he has needs and he knows that his feelings are probably just lust.

Phil grips his t-shirt and quickly slams Dan into the nearest wall, taking dominance, which almost takes Dan by surprise. Through their conversations Dan realised that Phil is the kind of person to talk only few words, but the words he does say are perfect, if a little shy. Dan, on the other hand, is the complete opposite, a sarcastic and brash speaker who talks a little  _too_ much. Phil didn't strike him as a dominant, but then Dan knows he wouldn't strike people as a submissive, and he definitely prefers to sub.

He's snapped out of his thoughts by Phil moving to nip at his neck, making him moan loudly. He knows that if Phil keeps doing that he would probably end up coming in his jeans without any contact, considering the fact that the skin on his neck is the second most sensitive area on his body.

"Shit," he breathes out, latching his fingers into Phil's hair and tugging roughly. Whether due to any pleasure or just to turn Dan on more, Phil moans loudly onto Dan's skin. Thankfully, Phil doesn't linger long on Dan's neck and is soon working away at his collarbones, biting down hard and extracting more moans. Before moving on, he licks his tongue across the bite, which is already bruising a little, and then breathes on lightly.

_God, he's good._

Before Dan even realises it, Phil's on his knees and tugging at the zipper to Dan's jeans, pulling them and his boxers down in one go. If Dan had any qualms about using Phil, they disappear the second Phil's hand is on him, stroking him quickly and turning him to putty beneath his hands.

If he wasn't hard before, he definitely is now, and he moans as Phil licks a stripe up his dick, right to his tip, where he hangs around for a while, delicately swiping his tongue up and down his slit.

"Shit, you're a fucking tease, aren't you?" Dan growls gutturally, and when he looks down at Phil he can see the smirk on the older man's lips just before he hums in approval, sending vibrations up Dan's length and making him throw his head back against the wall.

He almost regrets closing his eyes when Phil takes his whole tip in his mouth and starts to bob up and down, managing to fit almost his entire length in his mouth at once. Desperately, Dan tries to stop himself fucking right into the back of Phil's throat, and he's grateful when Phil places his hands on Dan's hips to steady him. Where the pale man's fingertips press into his skin, he can feel sparks of electricity, and even when Phil removes them to stand back up, the marks that he's left there are still tingling.

Dan rolls into Phil's hand as Phil grips his cock, reattaching their lips. Dan knows he can't take this much longer, so he mutters something incoherent into the other man's lips, hoping that he will understand.

It seems that he does, because Phil takes his hand away from Dan, making the younger whimper with need, and starts to stumble down his hallway towards when Dan supposes is his room, never breaking the kiss. As he does he pulls off Dan's top and throws it to some corner of the corridor.

They bang open the door at the end of the hall with their shoulders and before Dan knows it they're on the bed, Phil on top of him and grinding his hips into Dan's. Phil is still fully clothed so Dan dances his fingers along the hem of his shirt and like he can read his mind Phil understands, taking the shirt off quickly.

Before Phil comes back down to resume the kiss, Dan sees Phil's chest and is breath-taken, everything about this man seemingly perfect. "You're gorgeous," he mumbles against his lips once they're re-attached, and he can feel Phil smile.

"You're not too bad yourself," Phil pants just as he rolls into Dan's hips again, bringing him ever closer.

"If you don't hurry up... I'm going to come before... Oh fuck, just get in me," Dan hisses, and Phil seems all too glad to oblige, standing up on the bed to unbutton and remove his jeans, which are, Dan now realises, practically identical to Dan's own.

Taking far too long to undress, practically giving Dan a strip tease, Phil bites his lip as he looks down and sees Dan with his cock in his hands, getting himself off to the sight of him. With a chuckle, Phil kneels back down and grips Dan's hand, moving it and tutting, "No, not unless I say you can,"

Dan nods, not willing to argue, and removes his hands, grunting with anticipation as Phil reaches for what he supposes his lube.

"You need stretching?" Phil asks quietly, his voice husky and deeper than usual. Though he wishes that he didn't since he's not the biggest fan of finger-fucking, Dan hasn't gotten anything from a guy in months, he knows that he does, so he nods, but mutters,

"Do it quickly, though. I don't mind a bit of pain," with a grunt of agreement, Phil pours some of the liquid onto his hands and rubs them together to try and warm it up a little.

He presses one finger into Dan's entrance, he realises perhaps a little too quickly as Dan's face scrunches up in pain. The younger boy is  _awfully_ tight, Phil realises, and the last thing he wants to do is hurt him. He's gorgeous, and probably one of the kindest people he's met if their four hour chat was anything to go by.

"Tell me if you need me to stop," he murmurs, lifting Dan's legs so they're resting on his shoulders, making it slightly easier to get to his hole. Pushing the finger in and out, he waits until Dan looks relaxed enough for him to add another digit, and then he does so, pushing in a little faster this time.

Dan groans, much more from the pain than any pleasure, he just doesn't like this feeling  _at all_ , but if he's not careful he won't be able to walk in the morning, he won't be able to bolt before Phil's wonderful eyes convince him to stay.

Desperate to give Dan something, Phil starts to curl his fingers around, stretching whilst at the same time searching for that one sweet spot that would make Dan forget about the pain, at least momentarily. He knows he has found it when Dan shrieks, pushing himself down onto Phil's hand, wanting more. White flashes before Dan's eyes, the whole world disappearing for a minute.

"Fuck, just, just fuck me, I don't even care, just hurry up,"  

Phil shakes his head, knowing that he shouldn't comply to the boy's demands yet, so instead he keeps fingering, even faster, adding a third finger and going as quickly as he dares, before he figures that he can't keep Dan waiting anymore.

Before long Phil has his own cock coated in lube, and he's pushing in as quickly as he can, making loud moans fall from Dan's lips along with incoherent swear words. Dan reaches up a hand to pull Phil's head down, pushing his fingers into Phil's hair, which is soft beneath his fingertips. He can't kiss him, he's far too gone for that, so instead he just breathes onto the other man's lips and moans happily as Phil thrusts in and out of him.

As Phil slams straight into his prostate Dan screams again, and the rest of the world fades away, anything but the sound of the headboard banging into the wall, the sound of the flesh of Phil's hips smacking against his, their mixed moans just ceasing to exist to Dan anymore.

It's not long until he's almost coming undone, and he wants so desperately to reach down and touch himself, but he was told not to, and he can't form enough words to ask. For the third time that evening, however, Phil's reading his mind again and he snakes one arm in between them. All he has to do is pump Dan once before the younger boy is coming ribbons onto their chests, and Phil isn't far behind, riding out his orgasm, rocking into Dan sloppily.

Before he pulls out, he presses a gentle kiss to Dan's neck, and then he rolls off, panting.

"Shit," Dan mutters, trying to regain his breath. He looks down at himself, realising he's a complete mess and that he  _really_ needs a shower, but he's too tired to move.

"Do you believe," Phil starts, and Dan turns his head to face the man, who takes a deep breath before continuing, "in love at first sight?"

Dan ponders how he's meant to answer that for a moment. If he says no, he'd be lying. If he says yes, he'd practically admitting he feels something, and he doesn't even know if he  _can_. He was searching for an angel, but Phil... Phil doesn't know the second thing about him. Sure, he knows that his favourite band is Muse, he knows that he's left-handed, he knows that he loves the smell of freshly cut grass and coffee in the morning, he knows that he's a genius and that marks him out to people as a freak. What he doesn't know, what he  _can't_ know, is that Dan killed someone, no, he killed  _two_ people, and he doesn't even feel any remorse.

"Maybe," he settles for a middle ground. He feels Phil throw an arm around his waist, shuffling over to cuddle up to him.

"I do. I mean, I didn't this morning, but now..."

Dan knows  _exactly_ what Phil's saying, and he doesn't know how to reply. He can feel a tear slipping down his cheek, and to hide them he pushes Phil's arm away, sitting up and groaning when he realises how far away his clothes are. He can't make a run for it.

"Dan? Dan, I'm sorry, I just..."

"It's not your fault. It's mine. God, I'm so stupid," Dan snaps, feeling a familiar anger bubbling in his stomach, except this time it's not for anyone else, it's for himself. He just wants to fling himself into a lake because he's about to hurt the one person he ever thinks he might just  _love_.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I just really enjoyed your company and-"

"No, no, Phil, it's not like that  _at all,_ " Dan scoffs. His voice is so hoarse and forced he wouldn't believe himself, "I mean it. I think... I don't know how I feel, the problem is that I  _can't_  feel, alright? I shouldn't be able to feel  _anything_ ,"

"What? You're not making a bit of sense, Dan,"

"I know, that's because this just doesn't make any sense, okay? When I was five, I pushed a little girl off a climbing frame just for  _fun_ and she died. I killed her. And I don't even feel guilty about it," more tears start to fall down his face, and he can't even move, he's just so  _pathetic_ and  _stupid_.

Phil doesn't say anything. Instead, Dan can feel him crawl towards him and put his arms around Dan, holding him tightly.

"You were just a kid, Dan. If what I've seen of you is anything to go by, you're amazing, okay?" He mumbles, kissing the exposed skin of Dan's shoulders gently.

"No, no I'm not. I've never loved anyone before. I don't know what it feels like, but this... This feels like it might be. And you should be running Phil, because I'll probably end up hurting you too, just like I hurt everyone. That little girl I killed? She looked  _exactly_ like you. That's why I came with you at first, I was curious. But if I hurt her, I can see myself hurting you," he mumbled, burying his face in his hands as he spoke, but he knew Phil would still be able to hear him.

"Oh, Dan... Look, you don't have to say anything you don't want to. But you said you were looking for something, and you said you thought you'd found it. Were you talking about me?" He asks, voice cautious, as if he's speaking to some kind of dangerous animal. Which, in a sense, Dan supposes, he is.

"Yeah. I was. There was this thing my grandfather told me a long time ago... He was a preacher, you see. On the night that I... He said something to me. And it stuck, I don't know. He told me that I needed to find an angel to chase away the devil in me," Dan shakes as he says the words out loud for the first time.

"And you thought that was me?" To Dan, he sounds almost... Touched?

"Yeah," Dan admits, biting his lip and holding back more tears.

"Okay. Well, I know you're probably tired, and I don't want to force you into anything, but you're welcome to stay here for a few weeks. We can sort things out. Of course, if you don't want to that's fine. But I'd love it if you did. Because I think I might just love  _you_ ,"

~

Dan is a psychopath, and he is lost, and he's a bastard, and they were right all those years ago, he is an old soul, which is something Phil discovers the hard way. Because Dan is scarred for years double the ones he has, and they cause cracks, cracks that show all too often. Cracks that sometimes terrify Phil, because Dan will throw something against a wall, but he'll always stop before he goes too far and hurts someone else. But Phil helps. He helps him heal, if only a little. And sure, those psychopathic tendencies aren't going to go away, but they don't define him anymore. He's not defined by his IQ of 157 and the statistics that he can recite. He's defined by his personality instead, his gentleness that sometimes Phil wonders if anyone saw before him, because they can't have done if they'd labelled him insane. Phil knows that Dan will never go home, in fact, apart from the fact that it's southern, Phil's not entirely sure where Dan even comes from.

He found a news article once, and he hovered his cursor over it for a full minute before deciding that he didn't want to know. It wasn't long after they had met, and the headline read 'Seventeen Year Old Suspected Murderer Disappears'. He never said anything about it, he never will. Because Dan,  _his_ Dan, is not a murderer.

Maybe he's stupid for believing that, but in all honesty, he doesn't care about stupidity. Dan will rattle off a thousand statistics about murder rates, but he blanks them all out, because he hears Dan's prayers at night to a God that he swears blind he doesn't believe in, he hears him thanking Him for helping him, for helping him find the angel to chase away his devils at night.   

**Author's Note:**

> From my original author's note:  
> A/N: So I didn't do very much research into psychopathy to be quite honest, mostly because I don't need to. I know a fair amount about it, although I know a lot more about sociopaths, it's just psychopath fits better. I do know that you can't cure psychopathy really, so I would just like to say that Dan isn't a psychopath in this, it just so happens that's how he was diagnosed so that's what he believes, in fact I think that, personally, what's happened here is that he's re-written his memories to suggest that he is a psychopath. I think he has some psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies, in my opinion, but of course you can interpret it completely differently, I'm just telling you so I don't get any comments about inaccuracy. The author isn't always right ^_^


End file.
